Abstract

Poison gas warfare was initiated in the Great War by a German military unit that included five future Nobel laureates: James Franck, Fritz Haber, Otto Hahn, Gustav Hertz and Walther Nernst. It was Haber's idea to use poison gas. To implement gas warfare he devised an organization that meshed the academy into the military–industrial complex. Later three other Nobel laureates, Emil Fischer, Heinrich Wieland and Richard Willstätter, contributed to the enterprise. Huge quantities of poisons were used by both sides during the war, because they were well adapted to static trench warfare, even though—which is a surprise to many—they were substantially less deadly than explosives.